


sometimes love is not enough and the road gets tough (i don't know why)

by Duck_Life



Category: Z-O-M-B-I-E-S (2018)
Genre: Angst, Discrimination, F/M, Happy Ending, Intolerance, Protective Older Brothers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-07
Updated: 2018-03-07
Packaged: 2019-03-28 04:28:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,133
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13896258
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Duck_Life/pseuds/Duck_Life
Summary: Things are going great for Zed until two opposing football players start threatening him for continuing to date a human.





	sometimes love is not enough and the road gets tough (i don't know why)

The first time the guys from Shoreside approach him, it’s after they’ve just lost their own homecoming game to Seabrook. “Hey,” Zed says, his helmet tucked under one arm. In his head he’s mapping out escape routes as the two football players box him into a corner between the bleachers and the visitors’ locker room. “Can I help you?”

“Yeah,” the shorter one says, leering at him. “You can help us by keeping your disgusting dead hands off that cheerleader of yours.” 

Zed, if it’s possible, gets paler. “Look, guys, I don’t want any trouble,” he says, trying to smile and shrug it off. He holds out a hand. “Good game out there.” 

The taller guy glares at his outstretched hand and then spits at Zed’s feet. “It’s bad enough they let a freak like you on the team. Dating a human girl, though? That oughta be illegal.”

“My daddy always told me what would happen if the zombies started mixing with us,” the first guy says. “He said first they take our jobs, and then? They take our women.”

Zed gulps. “I, um, I need to go talk to Coach,” he rambles, trying to get away. Cold sweat beads on the back of his neck. “I’ll see ya, fellas.” 

“Not so fast.” One of the guys grabs him by the arm before he can get away, and when Zed flinches at the contact the other football player’s fist collides with his face. It hurts immensely more than the time Addison hit him, and he thinks he might come away with a black eye. “You don’t lay a hand on that girl, not ever again, you understand me, Dead Eyes? Or you’ll be sorry.” 

Panic claws at his throat and Zed, knowing he can’t escape, just shuts down. He goes limp. He nods frantically at the guys holding onto him. “Okay. Alright.” 

They laugh and jeer at him before releasing him, and Zed has to scramble to keep from falling on his back. “Later, zombie.” They start walking back up toward their own locker room, finally leaving him alone. 

After Zed gets his nerves back under control, he steps out from under the bleachers and almost runs into his girlfriend. “Hi!” Addison says, grinning at him. “I was just looking for you. You were great today!”

Zed stares down at her, at the sunlight glancing off her white hair. The altercation with the Shoreside players feels like a long drawn-out nightmare, could it have really only been a few minutes? “Yeah, well, I had my good luck charm on the sidelines,” he says, trying to cover up his anxiety. Addison smiles and stands on her tiptoes to kiss him, and then Zed wraps his arms around her and pulls her close to his chest. He needs to touch her and hear her breathing and now that she’s real, that she’s here. 

Addison is the greatest thing that ever happened to him. He’s not about to let that go because of some closed-minded guys from another school. 

For the next couple of days, things are normal. Zed goes to chemistry with Eliza and hides little love notes and dandelions in Addison’s locker. He goes to football practice and he helps Bonzo paint the sets for the school’s upcoming production of  _ Beauty and the Beast _ (and don’t worry, the irony isn’t lost on him.) 

By Friday night, he’s almost forgotten the scuffle with the Shoreside guys. Until he’s walking home after dark and someone confronts him right at the place where the barrier once stood. There’s a small fence there now, a little reminder from humans to zombies that while they may be making peace efforts, zombies should still know their place. 

Two figures swim up out of the shadows, and it’s takes Zed a second to recognize them. And then his heart drops to his stomach. He ducks his head and tucks his elbows into his sides, hoping that if he somehow makes himself small and quiet they won’t bother him. 

“Hey, freak,” one of them says, stepping up to him. Zed recognizes him as the one who punched him after the game. “I thought we told you to stop harassing the mayor’s daughter.” 

“Please just let me go home,” Zed says quietly, looking at the ground. If Eliza were here, maybe she would get in their faces and yell at them that they were being cruel and discriminatory. But he just bows his head, trying to shrink down until he disappears. He learned at an early age that humans don’t like you to be tall, or proud, or happy. They don’t want you to yell or argue. He learned at an early age that if you keep your head down, if you say “Yes, ma’am” and “I’m sorry, sir” and don’t raise a fuss, sometimes humans will just leave you be. 

“No,” the other guy says with a sneer. He slams Zed into the brick wall of the old zombie secondary school. “See, it looks like maybe you were having trouble understanding us. We said break it off with your little girlfriend, and you didn’t. So we’re thinking we’re just not speaking your language.” 

What are they going to do, start speaking in zombie at him? But then the second guy holds something up in front of Zed’s face. It takes Zed a second to recognize the object, but when he does he feels his mouth go dry. 

About a month after the cheer championship, Addison took a bunch of her old dolls out of her attic and recruited Eliza to help give the dolls makeovers using nail polish, make-up and paint. She made them all into little zombie dolls and gifted them to Zoey, who was hardly ever seen these days without one in her hand. 

And now, the guys from Shoreside are waving one of Zoey’s dolls in his face. “Anyway, we thought we’d give you a little demonstration, help you see where we’re coming from.” The guy grabs the doll’s head and pops it off the body, holding the head by its green-dyed hair and dangling it in front of Zed’s face like some voodoo talisman. “If you go near your cheerleader again, we’re gonna make that baby sister of yours pay for it. And she’s gonna wish we were as nice to her as we were to this dolly.” 

Zed’s vision goes hazy and red, and for a second he worries that his z-band’s going haywire. But it’s not. It’s just panic and nausea threatening to overwhelm him. If anything happened to Zoey he doesn’t even know what he’d do. 

“Fine,” he gasps, tears burning at the back of his eyes. “Fine, I’ll stay away. Just please don’t hurt my sister.” He swallows thickly and looks down at the ground. “Please.”

“That’s more like it,” one of the guys sneers. “Don’t let us find you hanging with cheerleaders again. Or else.” He drops Zoey’s doll to the ground and stomps on it with a sickening  _ crack _ . Zed flinches.

The guy holding him lets him go, and Zed shrinks in on himself again, willing them to just leave him alone. The two of them snicker at his defeated, scared expression for a moment, and then they nod at each other and walk away, back toward downtown Seabrook. 

Zed walks home, feeling ice cold down to his bones.

If he tries to talk to Addison, the guys from Shoreside will find out. And they’ll take it out on Zoey. As much as he hates it, he can’t ever risk something happening to his sister. So he does to Addison what the undead do best: he ghosts her. 

He ignores her text asking if he made it home safe, and he ignores the cute photos she posts the next day on ZapChat. When she texts him asking if he wants to go for frozen yogurt Saturday afternoon, he ignores that.

At dinner the next night, Zed’s dad asks how Addison’s doing.

“She’s, uh, she’s been pretty busy with her schoolwork lately,” he lies, looking down at his riced cauliflower. “So she might not be coming around so much.”

“Oh, well tell her good luck with her studies,” his dad says, grinning obliviously. “That girl’s got a good head on her shoulders, Zed.” 

“Yeah,” Zed says noncommittally. He looks at Zoey, who’s surreptitiously slipping some cauliflower to Puppy under the table. Being away from Addison hurts… but he doesn’t know what else to do. 

On Monday, when Addison crosses the cafeteria to say hi to him, Zed abruptly gets up and runs to the basement, mumbling an excuse to Bonzo about needing to grab something from the sports equipment room. If he told Addison about the threats, she’d get all up in arms about it and try to stand up to these jerks. 

He loves that about her, he really does, but it would only put Zoey in more danger. The guys would get mad at her but they wouldn’t take it out on her. They’d take it out on him and Zoey. So Zed avoids her. 

He avoids her all day, even skipping the one class they share to hide in the zombie safe room. Hiding there in the barracks-like bunks, he thinks back to the day they met, when she punched him in the face and then looked mortified. And he thinks about after, when they danced together and the whole world seemed to fall away. 

The world is too much entangled in his life now. And if he screws up, it’s not on his own head. It’s on Zoey’s.

After school, Addison marches into Zombietown and up to his front door. “Zed?” she asks, her fist hammering against the cheap plywood. “Zed, are you there?”

He clears his throat, coughs, knowing his voice will sound dry and monstery no matter what. And then he opens the door, just a crack. Just enough to see her. “Hi,” he says, feeling every inch of anxiety in him scream at him to ignore her a hundred percent. It’s an odd sensation, being so happy to see someone and yet so afraid. 

“Are you okay?” Addison says, bright and unaffected on the front doorstep. “It’s just you were acting kind of weird at school.” 

“I’m a zombie,” he says flatly. “I’m always weird.” 

“You know what I mean,” she says, giggling. He doesn’t say anything. “So, um, can I come in?”

“I don’t think so,” he says, trying to figure out how to send her away without breaking her heart— or his own. “Look, Addie, you’re great, but it’s just… you know, maybe we shouldn’t be hanging out anymore.” For a second it looks like she’s about to laugh, like he’s obviously joking. But then it sinks in. Her eyes get wide. 

“Zed…”

“I’m sorry,” he says, looking down at her feet. “I mean, it just wasn’t going to work. You and me, you know? We live in two different worlds.”

He expects her to be sad. And she is— but she’s also  _ angry _ . “Uh, yeah. I live in  _ reality _ and you’re apparently vacationing in Crazytown. Zed, come on, talk to me. Did I do something? Are you mad at me?”

“I’m just done fooling ourselves!” he says. Every minute she’s still standing there is another minute for the goons from Shoreside to notice, another minute that Zoey’s in danger. “Addison, if you and I were meant to be together it would be easy. This isn’t easy. And… I don’t want to do it anymore.”

“You’re breaking up with me.”

He makes kind of a helpless noise that he hopes she’ll take as a yes. If he talks now, he’s afraid he’ll start crying. 

Addison tugs at her hair, looks up at the sky and then back at Zed, who still can’t meet her eyes. “Well, fine. Fine. But maybe you could’ve been a little more mature about this, a little more honest? But… fine. I expected… different from you. More.” 

“I’m sorry.” Zed closes the door. Doesn’t slam it, not exactly, but he does close it in her face. He just can’t keep looking at her. Still with his hand on the knob, he stomps his feet, loud then soft, hoping she’ll think he walked away.

Because he can hear her crying. He can hear her crying on the other side of the closed door, and he longs to go outside and pull her into his arms, to kiss the top of her head and breathe her in and apologize and apologize and apologize. 

He can’t. So he stands there with his forehead pressed to the door, and he listens to her sniffle and wipe away her tears. He stands there until he hears her leave, and then he slides down to sit on the floor with his back against the wall. 

Puppy finds him there and whines, climbing into Zed’s lap. It’s like the dog can tell he’s unhappy. Zed pets Zoey’s dog, whose temperature runs warmer than his own. Its tail is still dyed green from when Addison first got it. 

Zed sits curled up with Puppy until his dad calls him to dinner. 

For the rest of the week, Zed moves through his daily routines like… well, a zombie. He does his homework. He goes to practice. He eats flavorless school lunches and makes meaningless conversation with Eliza and Bonzo, who both know something’s up but aren’t pressing him. 

Every now and then he looks over at Addison and finds her watching him. When that happens, they both swiftly look away. It hurts.

It hurts more when he looks over at her and she’s not looking. 

At the football game on Thursday, Zed definitely isn’t playing his best. They still win, but it’s close. Coach pulls him aside at halftime and asks him what’s wrong, and Zed doesn’t know what to say. 

After the game, Zed’s on his way to the locker room when he feels a hand on his shoulder. He expects the worst— Shoreside. Tensing up, he whirls around, ready to defend himself, but it’s not who he’s expecting. 

Bucky’s there, and he’s pissed. “Can I talk to you?”

“Yeah, sure,” Zed says, confused. “What’s wrong?”

Bucky has the ability to communicate about eleven different emotions simultaneously just with his eyebrows. Right now he’s cooked up a blend of three— anger, disbelief and annoyance. “‘What’s wrong?’” he repeats. “How about the fact that my star cheerleader isn’t sticking any of her landings because she can’t stop moping about  _ you _ ?” Bucky sighs. “Look, Zed, I know I’ve had my issues with you in the past. Mostly because of my… what’s Eliza call it? Internalized zombiephobia? That. But you and I are cool because you make my cousin happy. Except right now she’s not happy, she’s  _ miserable _ . What’s the deal?” 

Zed’s face crumples. He tells Bucky everything— the threats, the guys from Shoreside, ending things with Addison.

“They said they were gonna hurt Zoey?” Bucky says, looking furious. “My protege?” 

“She’s not really your  _ protege _ .”

“Your sister is the next generation of cheer, Zed,” Bucky says. “I’m not letting them get away with this.”

“No, no,” Zed says, panicking. “The reason I didn’t tell Addison is because I knew she’d react like this. You can’t say anything to them, Bucky. If you go after them, they’re just going to take it out on Zoey.”

Bucky’s lips curl upward and there’s steel in his eyes. “Oh, we’re not going after them,” he says. “The school system is.” 

“What?”

Bucky pats him on the shoulder, his mind working furiously. “Okay, here’s the plan. You need to apologize to Addison, ask her out on a date. It needs to be public, so… out there on the field, in front of the bleachers? No, better.  _ Instagram _ .”

“I don’t even have an Instagram.”

“Make an Instagram,” Bucky says, leading him down to the locker room. “Ask Addison on a date to, I don’t know, the Seabrook Starbucks. If all goes well, these a-holes will show up to threaten you again.”

“What if they go to my house and try to mess with Zoey?”

“I’ll handle it,” Bucky promises. “I’ll station the ’Aceys around your house, we’ll get Eliza to babysit or something. Zoey will be fine, Zed, I swear.” He jostles Zed by the shoulder. “Go make that post. I’ll see you tomorrow at Starbucks.” 

Zed can hardly sleep that night. He keeps worrying about the jerks who threatened him creeping into his house in the middle of the night and attacking Zoey. When he wakes up and checks his phone, he’s got a notification— Addison commented on his apology-and-asking-her-out post. “i’ll see you there,” she had typed. 

The plan is in motion.

When Zed arrives at Starbucks, he doesn’t even make it to the door before Bucky grabs him by the elbow and hauls him around back. “Okay,” he says. “Take off your shirt.” Zed raises an eyebrow. “Oh,  _ please _ , like Addison and I have the same taste in men. Get over yourself. Shirt off.” 

Zed frowns, but he takes his shirt off. Bucky spins him around and tapes something to his back— a cell phone. “That’s going to hurt when I take it off,” Zed complains.

“Don’t worry about taking it off, then,” Bucky says. He presses a button on the phone and spins Zed back around. “Alright, it’s recording.” He slides a bluetooth earpiece over his ear. “I’ll be out here listening. As soon as we’ve got enough information to get them in trouble, I’ll come get you out.”

“Are those guys even here?”

“Not yet, but they will be,” Bucky says. “I guarantee it. Go sit with Addison and wait for them to show up.”

“Addison’s already in there?” Zed’s beginning to worry that the nervous sweat beading up on his skin is going to unstick the taped cell phone from his back. “Maybe this is a bad idea.”

“How can it be? It was  _ my _ idea,” Bucky reminds him. “You got this. Go!”

So Zed leaves Bucky outside and walks into the Starbucks. Addison is sitting in a booth near the window, sipping a latte. She watches Zed walk in, acknowledging him but not saying hello. Zed sits without getting in line; caffeine would just make him even more nervous right now. “Hey,” he says, his throat dry. “How are you?”

“I’ve been better,” Addison says coldly. “But… I’m glad you want to talk.” She has her white hair pulled back into a short ponytail, with too-short tendrils escaping down her neck. She’s beautiful. 

“I’m sorry,” Zed says, sliding into a chair across from her. “I wasn’t fair to you.”

“I’m just confused,” Addison says, biting her lip. “I thought everything was fine. Did I do something? Did I  _ not _ do something that I should have?”

Zed’s sort of wishing Bucky wasn’t outside listening to everything in here. “No, it wasn’t your fault,” he says. “It didn’t… it didn’t even really have to do with you.”

“Then what was the problem?”

He opens his mouth, but then he feels a hand grab his shoulder, nails digging in. “Necrodopoulus, I thought we told you to stay away from this side of the barrier.” 

“Hey, fellas,” Zed says, fake confidence keeping him staring forward at Addison, who looks upset. “What’s up? Afternoon coffee run?”

“Zed, what’s going on?” Addison says. Zed stands up and turns his back to Addison, facing the Shoreside guys, who loom in front of him. “Who are they?”

“We’re friends of your boyfriend’s,” the second guy says. “Although we heard he wasn’t your boyfriend anymore. Guess we were lied to.” 

“We’re just talking,” Zed says. Even though he knows they’re after him and not Addison, he still tries to keep her behind him, away from his tormentors. “It’s allowed.”

“Not for you,” one of the guys says, sneering. “I thought we were clear. You keep up this thing with Miss Cheer, we go after your sister. You didn’t listen, so I guess we need to teach your freak little sister a lesson.” 

“Don’t touch her,” Zed says, voice low. He knows she’s currently safe with Eliza, but just hearing her threatened makes him furious. “Why don’t you just mind your own business and go back to Shoreside?”

“No.” One of the guys shoves him, not enough to knock him down, just enough to make him mad. “Hey, Chris, maybe if we make him mad enough he’ll go all full-zombie, huh?”

“Is that what you want, freak?” the other guy— Chris— says, shoving Zed even harder. “You want everyone in here to see what zombies really are?”

That’s not how it works. Zed’s a zombie, not the Incredible Hulk. His z-band is working perfectly fine and his body is completely in control. But none of that really matters; he’s still  _ different.  _

The barista looks upset but frozen, not sure what to do. All the patrons are watching now, waiting to see a fight break out. “Zombies don’t belong outside Zombietown,” says the guy who isn’t Chris. “Matter of fact, they don’t really belong there either. You know what we should’ve done from the start? We should have loaded up our rifles and taken out every last zombie. And you know what? It’s not too late.”

“THAT’S ENOUGH.” Bucky whirls in as dramatic as ever, slamming open the double doors. He slides in between Zed and the Shoreside players, hands on his hips. “And by ‘enough,’ I mean enough to implicate you on counts of violent threats and intent to assault a child.” He reaches up Zed’s shirt and rips off the cell phone, all the tape coming off with it. Zed yelps. “This—” Bucky waves the phone in their faces— “is all the evidence I need. Now, how do you think your athletic director is going to feel when he hears this recording?”

Both of the boys look paler than Zed. “Hey, we were just messing around…”

“He’s a  _ zombie _ , man!”

“I know,” Bucky says, folding his arms. “And yet y’all are the ones acting like monsters. I mean, Zoey Necrodopoulus is six years old!”

“Seven,” Zed corrects.

“She’s  _ seven _ years old!” Bucky blows ahead. “You’d hurt a kid? What the hell is wrong with you?” He jerks his chin toward the door. “Get out of here.” 

They don’t wait to be told twice. There’s a reason Bucky’s head cheerleader, and a reason he’s made almost everyone on the squad cry at least once. He can be incredibly commanding— even scary— when the situation demands it. 

The Shoreside guys run out the door, back to Shoreside. 

Bucky smirks and tucks the cell phone in his back pocket. “I’ll go ahead and email that recording to Shoreside’s administration,” he says haughtily. “Anybody with that level of disrespect doesn’t deserve to play in the league.”

Zed thinks about how Bucky was instrumental in one of the worst days of Zed’s life, how Bucky orchestrated the z-band malfunction, the scare after the homecoming game. And how he’s acting now… people really can change. 

“Thanks,” he says to Bucky.

“No prob.” Bucky shrugs. “I’ll leave you two lovebirds to get back to your date. Ciao.” And he’s gone. 

Zed turns around to find Addison watching him, looking sad and proud at the same time. “How long has this been going on?” she asks quietly, still standing.

Zed sighs. “Only like. Two weeks,” he says. “I didn’t want to tell you because… I didn’t want you to get involved.”

“I want to help, Zed.” Sinking back into her booth seat, she takes Zed’s hands as he sits across from her again. “I don’t want to be out of the loop. I’m here for you. And for Zoey.”

He nods, rubbing at his eyes. He can’t cry, not here. “I was… so scared. I’m sorry for everything I said to you, but… I didn’t know what else to do.”

“It’s okay,” Addison says. “You were trying to protect Zoey. You were trying to protect everyone. Zed, I’m not mad. I mean, I am, but not at you.” She squeezes his hand and smiles. “Those jerks are going to get what’s coming to them. And as for you…” Her eyebrows draw together, and she looks up at him with stars in her eyes. “I love you.”

“I love you, too.” They’ve said it before— but never in English. 

There are problems, still, always will be. Like how the guys from Shoreside might retaliate after they’re cut from the team. Like how anti-zombie rhetoric isn’t limited to those two. Like how Addison and Zed aren’t going to be able to walk into every coffee shop and sit down the way they are right now. 

But they’re problems that the two of them can share. 

They’ll be okay. 


End file.
